During the time of industrialization, the city became methodologically constructed from a repeatable pattern based on a grid. A methodology that leads to design from the large scale towards the small scale as the grid as an outline of property. Through this the industrialization of the house brought a specific kind of representation forth. A house as a machine for living that shapes the nuclear family as the diagram on which society is based. The family apartment is still what developers are trying to provide to the market where all our habitual habits are being standardized to specific commodities. One of the issues is the fact that the home is a kind of neutralized entity that we take as common sense.
Within this infrastructure, the home/apartment is viewed as a relationship from the urban condition. From this we tend to that the outline of the house/apartment, outline of the property, is the first engagement with the city. Within the borders the home is perceived as a private domain, away from the public. A space outside time, politics, and economy. Through this the home/apartment is a composition of functions with a possible range of different configuration that follows the logic of the grid.
Within this configuration of function its inhabitants can decorate the home/apartment as a form of representation of someone who lives inside the home/apartment. Which is a range of selection of objects that fits within function of the room. The décor of the home/ apartment is widely understood as a sort of memetic representation of its inhabitants, despite the obvious falsity of this. In other words, the home is a particular genre of space theoretically an infinite array of possibilities laid out, but this becomes the same through cultural appropriations.

Saint Petersburg is a second-largest city in Russia, having a population over 6 million people. Located in the northern part of the country on the edge of the Baltic Sea it was founded by tsar Peter the Great in 1703 as a future capital for Russian Empire. Tsar was wishing the new capital to become the most beautiful city in Europe and the city was built with an intention to open up Russia towards western traditions and western European world. Today the first core of the city – its` historic part built through 18-19th centuries – is world known as Northern Venice and conquers the hearts of millions visitors. But through 300 years of its’ history the city turned from being one of the most progressive cities in Russia into the city with the prejudice to anything new. Today the city is trying to keep its’ “historical appearance”, to preserve how it looked like when it was envisioned by one of the greatest tsars in Russian History, but this intension is leading the historic city centre of Saint Petersburg to its` devastation.

In this Research and Design project I was reflecting on how to approach the consvervativist thinking about applying contemporary architecture in historically important areas of the city. In my research I explored what are the origins of conservatism among the citizens of Saint Petersburg and the reasons behind historic centre of Saint Petersburg being captured in its` past. I aimed to understand how to re-interpret the gaps in the historic fabric of the city and how to use them to bridge the gaps in-between progressive intentions of the architects and conservative view of the citizens of Saint Petersburg. As a result of this research I was designing a small scale architecture university on the edge of the historic city centre, which main aim is to be as open to the public of Saint Petersburg as possible to invite people for inspiring observations, thoughtful discussions and unexpected discoveries about the approaches that are used in the realm of contemporary architecture today...

Delta systems, characterized by their dynamic nature and high population densities, are crucial for food and water security. However, they face significant challenges as they are on the forefront of climate change impacts, including sea level rise, river and coastal flooding, and coastal erosion. Among them is the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, where rice-dependent agricultural production systems and methods are increasingly unable to adapt to the new environment created by climate change. There is therefore an urgent need for climate-resilient agricultural transformation and the accompanying social engagement and cross-border cooperation, taking into account and adapting to local cultures and contexts. The Mekong Delta, spanning nearly 50,000 km2, is a region predominantly composed of fertile alluvial and marine sediments, stretching from Phnom Penh in southeastern Cambodia to southern Vietnam and encompassing the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Within Vietnam, approximately 39,000 km2 or 78% of the total area is covered by the delta. This graduation project will focus on its main area of rice production, namely the upper delta in the north.

This graduation project, under the Planning Complex Cities studio, will address the development of spatial planning and strategies that include political, cultural, and social contexts of the site, sustainable agricultural rice production adapted to climate change, and pilot spatial design for selected case areas.

The current Tuscan agri-food system is unsustainable. The so-called conventional farming practices are still the most commonly used on both global and local scale. These practices include activities such as intensive farming and the use of chemical phytosanitary products that cause the progressive deployment and contamination of local natural resources. Resources that are strongly needed in the future to sustain the agri-food systems against the threats of climate change. Existing policies for environmental engagement and financial support systems meant to increase the participation of farmers in more sustainable farming practices fail to attract enough participants to contribute substantially to the mitigation of agricultural impact on natural resources.
The research investigates the reasons behind the inefficiency of such tools. Concentrating mainly on the policies that define the juridical nature of food quality certification. Furthermore, through a scenario-based method, the “Maximization”, the full potential for these non-mandatory policies could have on the preservation of local natural resources is evaluated.
The results of the maximization method, together with the analysis, led on environmental threats for the Valdera agri-food system, and the examination of existing policies made it possible to develop a new framework for food quality certificates. A framework capable of combining the strengths and opportunities of existing food quality certifications and simultaneously increasing participation of local agri-businesses and accelerating the shift from conventional to sustainable farming practices and consequently the transition from unsustainable and vulnerable agri-food systems to sustainable and resilient ones.

A personal problem of dissociation has become the catalyst for a schizoanalysis on the levels of the corporeal, the clinical, and the collective, that uses a philosophical understanding of the unconscious to materialise a design for an urban psychiatric clinic for dissociative disorders.

In times when robustness and optimisation have become some of the guiding principles of design, it is clear that instant problem-solving solutions prove to be insufficient as long-term resilience strategies. In this context, ambiguity is seen as an alternative approach to answering the issues of adaptability and flexibility of delta conditions that accepts the open-ended nature of its complex processes, while challenging the issues of disciplinary interiority and human-centred design.

The preliminary research is focused on spatial, sensual, as well as semantic ambiguity and consequently explores architecture’s capacity to challenge perspectives, habits, and intentions. The subsequent design project employs ambiguity as a design resource to address the water-related issues of industry, recreation, and biodiversity in the delta city of Rotterdam.

I'm focused less on what a building is, or becomes, and more on how we build things. And the critical element which I’m exploring in this ‘how' is love. Which is to say I’m also not proposing a specific methodology for how things should be built, but rather exploring more of a fluctuating and volatile field of relationships and bonds in which we can make things. Which is neither contractural nor formally collective, but a working through, by working on, and being attentive to, our never stable projects of friendship. Because that is the reality which we are always already inescapably a part, and we urgently need to keep thinking about how to work from within that, as uncertain and anxiety-giving as that is. *The project revolves around the construction of a Tower of Love, through a variety of friendships and without building plans.

Venezia, la Serenissima. The most serene Republic. One adjective is sufficient to identify the city of Venice; more complicated is to figure out its singularities: the city of canals, trades, cultural exchange, gate between the west and the east, the city of the myth, the romantic city, the city of the endless descriptions. “At once solid and liquid, at once air and stone”, claimed Erica Jong, almost as if she wanted to seize in a sentence the multiple facets of the Venetian character. The several representations and attributes that depict Venice not only precede its reality, but constitute a determinant part of its character: the island is simultaneously more than its narrations and more than its reality. Starting from this dicotomy, the following project focuses on the analysis of Venice’s reality, the one of its present situation, by keeping its narrations as a boundary condition. The consideration of Venice not being the most serene Republic anymore is a fact. The city is experiencing a transitional moment in its lifetime: events as tourists’ invasion, drop of the population, transformation of the building stock to accomodate tourists’ needs are determinant factors for the future of the city, internationally recognised as slowly dying. The transformations are influenced by the effect that phenomena as overtourism produced on the island. And it is precisely the relationship between overtourism and Venice the topic that is tackled in this project, by taking the city as a case study, a symbol in the broader discussion about city and overtourism. Therefore this project does not want to be considered as a method for the definition of a solution for all the cities that are experiencing the aforementioned situation, but the opposite: the foundation for the development of an architectural proposal for the Venetian context, with the aim of invigorate the international debate around the topic of overtourism and cities’ transformations. Therefore, 'Of Stones and Travelers' is a project that relates with the city of Venice, considered as the symbol of the difficult relationship between cities and tourists, stones and travelers: the situation in which the city is transforming into a productive machine in its own consuming. It is by acknowledging this present condition that I have decided to analyse the city of Venice, by trying to understand what can be done, as architect, in order to affect its condition, with the aim of positively affecting its future. The exploration perpetuated with the project aims to understand and test the way in which the permanence of visitors in Venice can be affected via architectural terms. The theoretical approach adopted to reach this goal is the one of developing an exploration of the logics that undermine the characters of the city of Venice, therefore their understanding and transposition into a modern design. It is important to clarify that such exploration is not an aesthetical re-interpretation of Venice but the opportunity to test how the assemblage of the city can evolve without being stuck in its picturesque idea. Therefore, the value that I have researched is the understanding of Venice as an assemblage, as a combination of different layers which relationship define the character of the city. Its dissection and application in modern time is the value I have tried to pursue in my design.

Circular economy is gaining global momentum as a new economic system to achieve sustainable development. The built environment plays an important role during the transition to a circular economy. China and the Netherlands share a common basis on enhancing resource efficiency by circular economy, which provides opportunities for mutual learning. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how circular economy is introduced differently in China and the Netherlands, and how circular economy is implemented differently in the built environment.

Athens is a city that has grown immensely after its establishment as a capital, from around 7.000 inhabitants in 1834 to around 3,1 million in 2019. After 2006, due to various economic and political reasons, mainly through the implementation of additional taxation in the building sector and in property ownership, building activities have declined and the discussion concerning the bio-political dimension and the capacities of the current urban environment of Athens have become more intense. Focusing in the neighbourhood of Sepolia, this research seeks to offer an understanding of productivity beyond the binary of built/ unbuilt space and instead, see productive processes as offering the ground for individuation in the urban environment. Since the production of the city and its capacities affect each other in a reciprocal way, architectural processes can offer a problematised thinking on how the built environment can generate conditions for the development of individuation. Towards a new urban subject, desire is perceived as a force that enables a shift in the understanding of the production of space in Athens: from the desire for private space to the desire for new urban actions.

The mechanisms of satisfying desires have made modern urban complexes extremely fixed and programmed leaving no room for the ‘other’ to happen,the divergent from normative and expected behaviors to emerge. The green spaces, although a great chance to dilute this rigidness, follow the same expected patterns failing to satisfy the various emergent subjectivities that seek to constantly become ‘someone else’. This project was triggered by the need for a different kind of green places, part of an “otherness” of a city. Places that could offer something out-of-the-way, as much designed as random, that could act as counter-stories to the ordinary rhythms and norms of the urbanity.

Three new gardens are popping up in the midst of Rotterdam city center, at points, like in acupunctural treatment of the body. All designed in areas with unique characters, they seek to create new affective relationships between the citizens and their quotidian environment through the ‘reading’ of the ordinary as well as the infusion of the paradoxical landscapes of fictional settings. They are chances where you can get lost, or stumble, or even get wet; where you can climb stairs that may fall or scaffoldings that make weird noises; where you can jump above water and walk on narrow surfaces trying to keep your balance.
The gardens of deviation are there to oppose the homogeneity and striation of urbanity.

They constitute ‘leakages’ in the expectedness of current experiences in the urban realm: they are places that trigger peoples’ mind and stir emotions. Emerging in empty of meaning spaces of the urban tissue, they coexist with the ordinary and through their thresholds they filter it, making the virtualities of the existing places actual.

The reign of ‘Starchitecture’ is over. Good riddance. It has been buried together with the so-called neoliberal era that has dominated economic, political and social systems until (the financial crisis of) 2008. Uncannily, this turn roughly coincided with the cataclysm of our old faculty building. We uphold the hypothesis that the contemporary trends in architecture have emerged as an alternative to the (st)architectural positions dominant since the turn of the century. To meet the ethical challenge of the Anthropocene the architect’s role needs to undergo a fundamental change from that of a synaptic visionary (a psychological subject whose private meanings and public expressions are crucial to understanding her work and its effects) to a more humble yet audacious clinical/critical cartographer of the material-discursive realm. We propose to catalyse the transition by breaking the bad habit of representationalism. In this sense, we rely on Karen Barad's reinvigoration of the diffractive approach while Isabelle Stengers’s strategy of forming relays saves us from the totalizing and hence fatalistic teleological temptations. The exhibition diffractively relays five texts to eight diagrams.@en

KORS Collective Stavros Kousoulas TU Delft, Sjoerd van Oevelen AKI, Andrej Radman TU Delft, Niels Schrader Royal Academy of Art. Exhibition on 17-24 May 2017 at Academy of Art and Design in Enschede.@en